The European Parliament this week consented to put in place the main building-blocks for the European Union’s future diplomatic service. MEPs yesterday (20 October) approved revised financial and staff rules as well as an initial budget required for the European External Action Service (EEAS) to launch on 1 December.

The adoption of the rules – which have already received the endorsement of the EU’s national governments – paves the way for Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, to appoint the service’s senior management (see right). The EEAS is to begin its operations a month after launch, on 1 January, when 1,114 officials from the European Commission and 411 officials from the secretariat of the Council of Ministers are to be transferred to the service. Funding for an additional 118 posts requested by Ashton has been suspended by MEPs who want to get more detailed information on their assignment and on the service’s crisis-management structures.

Greater oversight

The revised financial regulation foresees greater oversight by MEPs of the EEAS’s spending, including detailed breakdowns of how many staff members are employed in which pay grades in individual missions and delegations. An aide to Ashton said after the budgets and budgetary control committees had approved the new rules that the compromise was reasonable, but a national diplomat suggested that it would tempt MEPs into trying to micro-manage the EEAS.

The revised staff regulation obliges the service to strive for greater representation of nationals from the Union’s new member states and of women in its ranks. But MEPs on the legal affairs committee, which approved the amended regulation on Monday (18 October), rejected demands by the foreign affairs committee to set recruitment targets for citizens of the European Union’s newer member states.

Gender balance

The staff rules foresee that EEAS officials should be of the “highest standard of ability, efficiency and integrity, recruited on the broadest possible geographical basis from among nationals of member states” and that the service should comprise an “appropriate and meaningful presence of nationals from all the member states”. Ashton is to submit a report on the implementation of the rules by mid-2013, with a special emphasis on gender and geographical balance.

Ashton said in a written statement that she would use “all the possibilities offered in the application of the EEAS appointment procedure to achieve these objectives”. The EEAS “should profit fully from the diversity and wealth of experience and expertise developed in the various foreign services in the Union”, she said.

Fact File

The vote

MEPs yesterday (20 October) approved a revised financial regulation (with 578 in favour, 39 against and 28 abstaining) and a new staff regulation (with 513 in favour, 51 against and 28 abstaining). The budget for the remainder of this year was adopted with 608 in favour, 41 against and 11 abstaining.